The Tasmanians were of medium height, the average for the men being 1.661 m. (5 ft. 5½ in.) with a range from 1.548 m. to 1.732 m. (5 ft. 1 in. to 5 ft. 8 in.); the average height for women being 1.503 m. (4 ft. 11 in.) with a range from 1.295 m. to 1.630 m. (4 ft. 3 in. to 5 ft. 4¼ in.). The skin colour was almost black with a brown tinge. The eyes were small and deep set beneath prominent overhanging brow-ridges. The nose was short and broad, with a deep notch at the root and widely distended nostrils. The skull was dolichocephalic or low mesaticephalic, with an average index of 75, of peculiar outline when viewed from above. Other peculiarities were the possession of the largest teeth, especially noticeable in comparison with the small jaw, and the smallest known cranial capacity (averaging 1199 c.c. for both sexes, falling in the women to 1093 c.c.).
Tasmanian Culture.
Undeveloped Speech.
The aboriginal Tasmanians stood even at a lower level of culture than the Australians. At the occupation the scattered bands, with no hereditary chiefs or social organisation, numbered altogether 2000 souls at most, speaking several distinct dialects, whether of one or more stock languages is uncertain. In the absence of sibilants and some other features they resembled the Australian, but were of ruder or less developed structure, and so imperfect that according to Joseph Milligan, our best authority on the subject, "they observed no settled order or arrangement of words in the construction of their sentences, but conveyed in a supplementary fashion by tone, manner, and gesture those modifications of meaning which we express by mood, tense, number, etc.[370]" Abstract terms were rare, and for every variety of gum-tree or wattle-tree there was a name, but no word for "tree" in general, or for qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, round, etc. Anything hard was "like a stone," round "like the moon," and so on, "usually suiting the action to the word, and confirming by some sign the meaning to be understood."
Fire-making, Tools and Weapons.
They made fire by the stick and groove method, but their acquaintance with the fire-drill is uncertain[371]. The stone implements are the subject of much discussion. A great number are so rude and uncouth that, taken alone, we should have little reason to suspect that they had been chipped by man: some, on the other hand, show signs of skilful working. They were formerly classed as "eoliths" and compared to the plateau implements of Kent and Sussex, but the comparison cannot be sustained[372]. Sollas illustrates an implement "delusively similar to the head of an axe" and notes its resemblance to a Levallois flake (Acheulean). J. P. Johnson[373] points out the general likeness to pre-Aurignacian forms and there is a remarkable similarity of certain examples to Mousterian types. Weapons were of wood, and consisted of spears pointed and hardened in the fire, and a club or waddy, about two feet long, sometimes knobbed at one end; the range is said to have been about 40 yards.
Diet.
Dwellings.
In the native diet were included "snakes, lizards, grubs and worms," besides the opossum, wombat, kangaroo, birds and fishes, roots, seeds and fruits, but not human flesh, at least normally. Like the Bushmen, they were gross feeders, consuming enormous quantities of food when they could get it, and the case is mentioned of a woman who was seen to eat from 50 to 60 eggs of the sooty petrel (larger than a duck's), besides a double allowance of bread, at the station on Flinders Island. They had frail bundles of bark made fast with thongs or rushes, half float, half boat, to serve as canoes, but no permanent abodes or huts, beyond branches of trees lashed together, supported by stakes, and disposed crescent-shape with the convex side to windward. On the uplands and along the sea-shore they took refuge in caves, rock-shelters and natural hollows. Usually the men went naked, the women wore a loose covering of skins, and personal ornamentation was limited to cosmetics of red ochre, plumbago, and powdered charcoal, with occasionally a necklace of shells strung on a fibrous twine.
Extinction.